


Wrong

by uminoko



Category: Marvel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 10:12:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uminoko/pseuds/uminoko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>General Thunderbolt Ross gets kicked by the Abomination and has some dying regrets.  A little warning for language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrong

In the last minutes of General Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross's life, after he gave up desperately grasping to understand the mountainous weight on his heart, he remembered the day he took his daughter to the zoo.  The sun was on her shining braid, and--'Daddy!  Daddy!'--she was clapping her hands at the elephant, which really wasn't doing much more than just standing there and being an elephant, a grey heavy mass ( _pressing, pressing on the heart; why can't I move?_ ) with small, twinkling black eyes.  The General, who was not yet a General, but then again, he was always the General from the moment he drew his first breath, smiled into his chestnut mustache, and told his little girl the tale of blind men grasping at the animal's trunk and legs and skin, never figuring out the whole of the elephant.

In retrospect, it occurs to Ross that maybe he also may have gotten a little caught up in less-than-holistic aspects of the world.

That afternoon, Karen baked them some pie.  He is not sure what kind of pie it was, though his increasingly fevered mind jumps to apple, probably out of some latent patriotic nostalgia, which he always associates with his late wife.  He remembers her before she was  _late_ , or  _wife_ , or even  _his_.  Karen.  The commanding officr's daughter.  He doesn't quite remember their first meeting beyond vague thoughts about how she was just the right eight to pleasantly accentuate the masculinity of any ambitious gentleman who would offer her his arm, but especially himself.  And, oh, he cut a splendid figure then, tall and smug with youth.  Growing up, Betty was always lanky like him; she did not inherit her mother's magnificent curves, nor much of her mother's anything, really, the quiet, stubborn child, but she had her hair, and full lips, and the laugh that came so easily to her mother, but not Betty.

Ross forgets when he noticed Miss Lee's exceptionality, her softness, or the way she could simply burst with whatever emotion she currently experienced.  When he climbed through the ranks and earned himself invitations to Stark's parties, goddamned Howard noticed her right away, the way he tended to notice vivacious brunettes.   The hair fell out when she was sick, but she still smiled as her life seeped through their fingers, and the fucking doctors did nothing, nothing, not all the scientists in the world ( _so heavy_ ), those white-coated vultures, building their weapons and not saving _one_ life. _  
_

He learned that weapons were far more reliable than the alternative.  He struck with deadly, random precision, and war closed around Ross like armor, except when his daughter looked at him and smiled Karen's smile.

So he sent her away.

He wanted her to be happy.

He just...didn't wanter her to be happy around _him_ , and that was a terrible thing, and he was a fool, he would make up for it, he would bring her back, and they would work together, and he would never ever let her go again, he would never let anyone hurt her like he did.

 _Oh god_.

"Where's Betty?" the General coughs out the words to some kid who is kneeling next to him, and realizes, unmistakably, that the clarity came too late.


End file.
